President's Column
September 2025
Driving Out of Denver
Like some of you who attended the 2025 AAEA & WAEA Joint Annual Meeting in Denver this past July, I took time after several days of stimulating workshops, committee meetings, competitions, presentations, and networking events and drove into the majestic Rocky Mountains that beckoned us from the Mile High City. The elevation of the Rockies can bring perspective – like a stunning vista prompting reassessment of long-held beliefs about one’s connection to the world around you. However, the climb – while exhilarating – also presents challenges, and can take a toll on the climber.
This analogy seems apt for AAEA right now. The meetings in Denver were a high point - among the most well-attended summer gathering in recent history, particularly among those not held in Washington, DC. With more than 1600 in attendance, many new vistas were explored, old acquaintances renewed, and new connections forged, all in support of our mission: To enhance the skills, knowledge, and professional contributions of economists who help society solve agricultural, development, environmental, food and consumer, natural resource, regional, rural, and associated applied economics and business problems.
But we also know that, as we continue on our path, there are many steep climbs ahead. One of these tough climbs is to help solidify the financial footing of the Association, which has patched over a structural budget deficit with the market gains on a portfolio of investments held by AAEA and the AAEA Trust. One of the contributors to this recurring annual deficit is the annual meeting itself. For example, even with incredibly strong attendance in Denver, and despite registration fees higher than some other conferences you’ve likely attended, the cost of running the annual meetings still exceeds revenues.
AAEA’s summer meetings face very high costs due to a combination of factors, including the number of rooms we demand for the conference (at least 28 rooms for simultaneous sessions) and the moderate size of attendance (two to three times larger than AERE, but three to four times smaller than ASSA). The AAEA Board and the Executive Committee are working diligently to find ways to address this issue. I personally combed through every line item of the audio visual contract to see if savings opportunities exist. For example, for each room where a concurrent session is held, we pay a daily rate to rent the screen, computer, projector, audio, and other equipment that makes each room ‘presentation ready’, and we use 28 rooms each day during the main two days of the conference.
Despite the costs, the Annual Meetings are the life blood of the Association, facilitating connections with other amazing economists who shape our lives in myriad ways. Sadly, one of these amazing colleagues - Uma Lele – passed away this summer, leaving a tremendous legacy of not only intellectual accomplishments (she was an AAEA fellow and the President and a Fellow of the International Association of Agricultural Economics, among her many honors), but also a legacy of supporting the next generation of economists. Her scholarly work advanced our collective understanding of the nuanced interactions among agricultural growth, policy, equity, environment, and gender, and their joint impact on economic development.
If – like me - you never met Dr. Lele, you may nonetheless recall hearing her name during the Awards Ceremony as she endowed several funds that support programs such as the Uma Lele Mentor Fellowship Fund for Women, which helps early career scholars who are citizens of and reside in a developing country to work with distinguished mentors on cutting edge, policy-relevant research. If you are moved to continue her legacy of scholarship and action, please consider donating to Pratham USA (https://prathamusa.org), an organization supported by Dr. Lele that provides education to children in the slums of Mumbai, India, or to AAEA’s Uma Lele Special Purpose Fund (http://www.aaea.org/trust/donate).
As we consider the next annual meeting, which will be held in Kansas City in July of 2026, we are dedicated to making this another mile-high experience for members, and to balancing the meeting’s costs and revenues. One area we will consider is that of expanding sponsorship of the Annual Meetings. We hope to engage with local and national businesses and organizations who would like to connect with our members both at the meetings and perhaps throughout the year as part of our regular newsletter and email communications. If you have ideas for sponsors, feel free to reach out to me. With enough sponsors, we hope that we can make the meeting a net positive event—not only continuing one of the great traditions of the Association, but also reducing our structural deficit and continuing AAEA’s exhilarating upward momentum.
Brian Roe
AAEA President